Yes, yes, we've reached the dumbularity, where the intelligence of technology has advanced to such a great level, people don't know their own phone number. https://mashable.com/article/what-is-my-phone-number
Do you like parasites? Or dislike them but can't stop learning about them? The worst ones are in the sea. Makes all of the parasitoid wasp stuff seem tame! There are worse fates than being paralyzed and fed to a hungry larvae who eats your organs selectively so you live longer.
Here is a great video. It is very gross. But it's cool.
@ai6yr John Vaillant’s Fire Weather is an absolute must read. It’s about a lot more than the 2016 fire in Fort McMurray — it’s about the reality of the climate most of us will be living in for the rest of our lives
@ai6yr the die offs reported with penguins in Antarctica and flamingos in Africa have been extremely alarming. Fortunately it can’t be transmitted to us because we don’t want to think about it.
“The humanities majors are the ones who think critically about words, and since the machines can now generate words, who really needs the #humanities majors?”
Most of history is people living nasty, brutish and short lives and modernity is a paradise by comparison, example 9,328:
Before the introduction in the 1920s of iodized salt, iodine deficiency was so widespread in the northeastern U.S. that it was known as the “goiter belt,” for the painfully enlarged thyroid glands that millions had as a result of this deficiency.
@mimsical@futurebird I had no idea it was endemic in the US but it was also a devastating condition in Switzerland (sorry if this is repetitive — I quit the Washington Post a few years ago and was not able to read the whole thing)
@ai6yr fortunately bird flu can't be transmitted to mammals. Or at least not people. Well at least it isn't airborne. Well at least everyone has got some masks left. Okay well, I grew up on re-runs.